Having trouble losing weight?

Obesity is a growing epidemic in the United States, affecting an increasing percentage of people, even children.

What is causing this alarming trend? It's not just from eating too many calories. To lose and keep off weight, you have to be a fat-burner.

The body can burn two things for energy: sugar or fat. You are either a sugar-burner or a fat-burner. While a fat-burner maintains an ideal weight, a sugar-burner craves sugars and starches because these provide the cells of a sugar-burner's body with fuel for energy. Unfortunately, sugars and starches get converted to fat.

So how did we become a nation of sugar-burners instead of fat-burners? A sugar-burner is stuck in sugar-burning mode and has weight-loss resistance. This person can't lose weight and keep it off, no matter what is tried: starvation diets, fad diets, HCG and so on. Weight-loss resistance occurs when the body's cells become inflamed.

Toxins in the body cause this inflammation, which disrupts cell function and energy production. Nutrients cannot get in to feed the cells and wastes can't get out. This damages the genes inside your cells, causing your body to express the bad genes for obesity and other diseases.

A hormone called Leptin, which is produced from fat cells, normally tells the brain to burn fat. Cells in the brain that normally respond to Leptin get damaged by the inflammation caused by sugars and toxins in our body. This leads to Leptin-resistance and the fat doesn't get burned.

We stay sugar-burners and a sugar-burner burns up his or her muscles for energy, not the fat. A toxic person cannot burn fat.

To become a fat-burner, we must remove inflammation and toxicity to allow Leptin to work, and to turn off the "fat genes" in the damaged cells.

In many cases, converting the body to a fat-burner metabolism requires a scientifically-designed cellular detoxification that takes approximately two months to remove these toxins, reduce inflammation and allows cellular damage to heal.

First, I recommend being tested for potential toxicity and inflammation by a doctor who is knowledgeable of neurotoxicity for the presence and effects of inflammation and toxins on the brain. Proper testing can assist in the design of an appropriate detoxification program.

A simple urine test can quickly determine the level of inflammation in the body. Blood tests can determine the level of Leptin and detect other markers in the body and brain for inflammation and toxicity that stops Leptin from working, and keeps you in sugar-burner mode.

This is important to overall health because cellular inflammation affects not only your weight, but your vital organs. This can put you at risk for heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, fibromyalgia, mood disorders, hormone imbalance and cancer.

Dr. Tim Holcomb is a natural health and chiropractic care specialist in Victoria. Reach him at Drh@drholcombsnaturalhealth.com.